Where Are my People? A Question for Genocide Deniers

By Minega K Albert

This book shows in details how the Genocide against Tutsis which took place in Rwanda in 1994 was planed and organized well before it happened. It also point out inconsistency in some reports of researchers which intend to lower the death toll of the genocide in the purpose to minimize its impact on the Rwandan society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Minega K Albert
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310464027

Minega K Albert

Minega K Albert is a native Rwandan who likes to use the power of words to share experiences of his wonderful motherland. As a direct witness of the Rwandan Genocide, his first work is inspired by the times of that dark period. A Plane Crash is a first book of a two series story named RWANDA 94, and Back Home will follow soon

Book preview

Where are my people?

A Question for Genocide Deniers

By Minega K. Albert

Copyright 2015, Minega K. Albert

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. Thank you for downloading this book. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial purposes. Thank you for your support.

Chapter 1: Why now?

In 1994, Rwanda was hit by one of the fastest and most deadly mass killings of the modern times. Even though the United Nation and other international organisations have declared the massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda a Genocide, many researchers and among them eminent scholars keep questioning its legitimacy to be called a genocide. Some of them challenge the death toll of Tutsis slaughtered during the 1994 horrible three months. They base their researches on population censes and assumption rates of birth and death which were available before 1994 and come up with an extrapolated number of Tutsis living in Rwanda before April 1994. From there, and using statistics of genocide survivors released by the government of Rwanda after the Genocide, they challenge the approximate death toll of almost a million of people reported to have been perished from April to July 1994.

Another trend of researchers claim that the massacres against Tutsis in 1994 should not be qualified of Genocide as it would not comply with the genocide process detailed in a document developed and presented to the US, State Department 1992, by Dr. Gregory Stanton, the president of The Genocide Watch.

In the maze of revisionist reports and reposts of the defenders of the Genocide against Tutsis, my query as a writer and a genocide survivor is: "why such vehement attacks when the Genocide against Tutsis happened on a broad daylight with the coverage of international media and while the highest international institutions such as the UN were represented in the country? There could be many realities behind the revisionist reports. One of these would personal interests of the real actors of the genocide or their sympathizers. But there is a major fact which deserves to be considered: did all the researchers who conducted surveys about the genocide understand the Rwandan society, especially that of before 1994?

Chapter 2: The war of figures

The number of victims of the Rwandan genocide serves as a challenging argument in the hands of the increasing number of the revisionists. As none had the interest to count the number of people while they were slaughtered, the only way to have an approximate death toll is to use the existing figures collated from three national population censes conducted in Rwanda in 1952, 1978 and in 1991. Due to the socio-political situation of Rwanda prior to 1994, many factors which could have influenced or affected in a way or another statistics reported out of each census should be observed. In most of the studies conducted after the genocide these factors were ignored or minimized due to the lack of enough of evidences to back their theories.

Another significant argument in the hand of the Rwandan genocide revisionists is the number of Hutus killed during the massacres and the war to liberate the country. For some researchers, the number of Hutu victims would be even higher than that of the Tutsis. Still according to their reports, the fact that Tutsis under the RPA army won the war, it would be enough evidence that Hutus were the one targeted during the massacres and not the other way round.

2.a. Manipulated figures

For political reasons, under the two first republics, the number of Tutsis living in Rwanda was under reported to minimize their presence in the country. In 1973 Juvenal Habyalimana took power in a military coup and overthrew President Gregoire Kayibanda’s government, accusing him of failing to unite all Rwandans. It was true that under the rule of President Kayibanda, killings of Tutsis have occurred every time the country faced attacks of Inyenzi, a group of Tutsis who have fled the country since 1959. Habyalimana used the same pretext to remove his former friend and mentor from power and declared Rwanda a State of Unity, Peace and Development. For the whole world to endorse his military coup, he vowed to protect Tutsis who have been persecuted and killed under the rule of his predecessor, and since then until 1994, no massacres of Tutsis were reported in the country. People of all ethnic origins were reported to live in harmony, and mutual respect. They created strong ties through marriages and other social encounters.

However, the new government installed other ways of discrimination in order to set limits on Tutsis undetected by outside observers. A system of quotas based on the percentage of each ethnic group was installed. Through the system, the government could determine how many Hutus, Tutsis and Twa were allowed to access education, public employment or to be recruited in the army. Related institutions and through the national censes had to make sure that the official number of Tutsis never